Once again Facebook has been drawn into another privacy debate. Basically their practices of updating their privacy settings in line with the EU data protection laws are being questioned again. This time by an independent review team on behalf of the Belgian Data Protection Authority.

Why does this matter to the likes of you and me?

The question being asked is really quite simple really. Why should you care how Facebook uses your data? After all you agreed to their terms of service and agreed that they could use your data right? Well quite simply the question is around the control that you as a user have over their data. Can you simply turn on and off what data you share with advertisers and is it easy to understand what data they can see.

The simple and uncomplicated answer to this is no you can’t. But there have been some changes to the privacy settings so it is worth reviewing your privacy settings again as they did change a couple of months back to give more granularity.

How can I be in control of my data

So you want to be the one controlling and seeing what information advertisers and the like can see on your social networks. You want to know what information they can see and what you have opened up to the world. We have a simple solution that also has the added benefit of giving you a copy of all your social media content on all your social networks in one location. Your computer and you are the only person who sees and accesses it.

Download Digi Me and review your social media data today. See what advertisers can see and if you don’t like what you see tighten up your security settings or remove your account. Remember you have a copy of all your data so you won’t lose it in the process!

This weekend brings us The Oscars and along with that comes a flutter of anticipation on social media. Whether you are a celebrity awaiting the winners announcement or someone who is a bit of a movie buff you can feel the tension rising as this week goes on! To help get you into the spirit of the event we wanted to share how you can interact with your favourite celebrities during this exciting time!

Many people want to share that anticipation with celebrities that they follow on Twitter but very few of us ever get a direct response back. But when you do that moment is magical! So how do you go about doing it?

Make your tweet memorable.

Share something that will make them laugh, cry or go aaaaawww!

Include an image in your tweet. (but make sure it is appropriate)

Join in with conversations that the celebrity is having online.

Be aware that some celebrities only ever broadcast out and don’t respond. (You’ll never get a response from these)

Consider challenging the celebrity.

Don’t spam them.

Don’t resend your message loads of times.

If you were a celebrity and it was your life, what would you respond to and why?

If you do manage to inspire a celebrity interaction you will probably want to capture the moment forever. Download Digi Me and save that moment forever!

Back in December Instagram added 5 new filters to their image options. Some of you may not have noticed them but they are: Slumber, Crema, Ludwig, Aden & Perpetua. For the photo enthusiasts out there this came as great news but it is always interesting to know which filters you use most often. Saving you time trawling through them all and finding just the ones you know you really like.

How to find your most used Instagram filters

So here’s that all important information on how you can find out just which filters you use most often.

Step 1.

Download Digi Me (formerly SocialSafe) from our website. The free version will work just fine for this.

Step 2.

Connect your Instagram account and then sync it using the sync button.

Step 3.

Go to Insights where you will find three different insights section. The one you are looking for is Instagram Filters.

Step 4.

Go to the most used tab and scroll down. You will find a pie chart showing your most used filters and if you scroll down even further as a bonus you will see your most popular images based on your most used filters.

Bonus Step

If you just want to see your most recently used filters go to the calendar icon at the top and select your date range or a time period and voila! Now you can see a subset based on your time period!

Instagram is just amazing with all those beautiful images that everyone shares. When you share images on Instagram you usually tag them so that they are more easily found and appreciated by others.

Digi Me saves your Instagram photos along with the message, tags and comments that are associated with them. Our challenge for today is to see if you can find your most used Instagram Hashtag and the Instagram photo that got you the most comments.

As the internet gets older so does our online digital footprint which builds up our online reputation. Over time our online reputations have become more important on both a professional and personal basis. Companies now look to our social media accounts to see if we have a presence there, they look at what our behavior is like and how that will affect their companies. Companies too are protecting their own brand reputation online as this is what they use to trade on.

This article will detail some tips around how to manage your online reputation and provide links to a few useful tools that may help you to clean up you reputation online should you need to!

Top Tips for Managing Your Online Reputation

Monitoring your reputation – whether you are an individual looking for a job or a company looking to understand how you are seen by others online you need to consider monitoring your reputation but what tools can you use to do this. Well simply one of the most useful tools about is Google Alerts. Just enter your search criteria and see what news and key search data comes up on you or your company. Also consider including key company employees in these alerts so that you can see who has influence within your company.

Repairing the Damage – So you’ve seen some content that you really think is damaging your reputation. Here are some ways to fix the damage. If it is content that you own. Remove it and then ask for the content to be taken down by the relevant search engines. For example Google has a page removal tool in its webmaster tools. If the content is owned by someone else try getting in contact with them and requesting that it is taken down. If the content is defamatory you may wish to consider a cease and desist request through a lawyer.

On Social Media – Monitor all the comments on your social media channels including your blog. Comments from competitors or that are negative towards you or your company/ products are not necessarily a bad thing if you respond reasonably and quickly. Leaving the comments to fester or responding overly defensively or in an unreasonable way will leave a lasting mark on your social channels. If there is a user that is constantly just leaving negative comments that aren’t constructive consider moderating the user or banning them from your page or blocking them from your channels.

Deleting content – If you are going to delete comments or content on your social networks it is worth considering taking a copy/ snapshot of what was up there before you delete it in case for any reason you need evidence of what had happened. Compliance can also be another good reason to back up your content before removing it from social media sites. You can use tools like Digi Me by Socialsafe to do these backups and they do follow compliance standards.

If you have some top tips for managing your online reputation or have a story to share about how you have done this, share it in the comments area below.

And remember if you liked this article share it with your colleagues and friends using our sharing buttons!

One of our lovely Twitter followers yesterday asked about whether our tool enabled you to capture your Facebook Page content. The quick and easy answer to the question is yes of course and yes this does include the comments on each post as well as images.

How do I do that?

The answer here is simple. In much the same way as you add your Facebook Profile to your account you can add any Facebook Page that you manage. Each Page that is added counts as an additional account.

Step 1.

Go to Settings and select “Add an Account”. You will then see the following account view showing your current accounts that you already have connected and the option to add your Facebook Page Account.

Select “Add your Facebook Page Account”.

Step 2.

You will then be asked to authorize SocialSafe to access your data. Click “Authorise Now” and you will then be asked to log into Facebook if you aren’t already logged in.

Step 3.

You will then be presented with a list of Facebook Pages that you manage. Click on the page that you wish to add.

That’s it. Now your page data will show up and you can review your page insights with our software in the same way as you would your Facebook Profile content.

Today saw a long-awaited change to the Facebook default privacy settings. For a long time users’ status updates were set to ‘Public’ visibility by default, with users having to adjust their privacy settings to restrict them to only their friends or to custom groups going forward.

However, some five years after the Facebook default sharing setting for new users was set to Public, the social network has finally reacted to user sentiment by changing this. Anyone joining Facebook from now on will have their posts automatically set to ‘Friends’. New users will also see a reminder when they make their first post that they can change the default privacy settings.

For all current users, it might be worth double-checking the visibility of your current settings just to make sure you’re not unintentionally sharing your posts with a wider audience than intended. To do this, simply click in the text box where you’d go to write a status, and then click on the drop-down to view/edit the settings:

Here at SocialSafe we believe that sharing is a wonderful thing, but we also recognise that everyone has a right to privacy. We do our best to keep you up to date with any changes to the privacy settings of the major social networks that our backup application supports, but if you have any hot tips or discover any privacy flaws on these social networks that might result in people over-sharing, then please feel free to let us know and we’ll help spread the word.

Last year you may have read a post on here about a friend of mine who had a job interview cancelled because the employer carried out a social media check and found something on her Bebo account that they didn’t like. She hadn’t used Bebo in around 8 years and never for one second thought that someone would take the trouble to look on there when screening for an interview.

Naturally she then tried to delete the account but found that while her profile was still publicly viewable, there was no way to login and edit or delete it. We both emailed Bebo asking them to deleted our accounts in September 2013, but I didn’t hear anything until February, when they said:

Hey Andrew,

Totally understand your concern. Please know that we have received your request and are building a tool as we speak to get this done for you asap. Thanks for your patience.

Thank you for your email,

Bebo Support

Anyway, they have since got back to me this week, saying that my account had actually been deleted – as per my request – a while ago:

So if you wanted to delete a Bebo account, we can tell you that there is a way. From my own experience, if you simply send an email to bebo@monkeyinferno.com asking them to delete an account they can do this for you. You’ll probably have to prove that you are the one who owns the account, but in my case I just emailed them from the address used to create the account in the first place, and they didn’t ask me for any further information.

Here at SocialSafe we absolutely believe in holding on to your past and cherishing the memories you create online, but at the same time we’ve all said things online that at some point we later regret. We know a number of people had commented on the original article about this, so hopefully this will help anyone looking to delete a Bebo account.

If you would like to back up 4 social media accounts for free. Why not download Socialsafe for free.

As we continue to make improvements and add new features to SocialSafe, there are more ways to view and do more with the content backed up within your library. We’ve put together a video showing you the main ways to interact with your content and how to find particular items.

While this video is primarily aimed at new users who have just installed SocialSafe for the first time, this video should help anyone that has been with us for a while and who may not have fully explored all of the features of SocialSafe:

We’ll be continuing to make more of these videos over the coming weeks and months, and would really appreciate any feedback you have so that we can make them as helpful as possible to you, the users. Feel free to let us know what you think about the videos, or anything else we do, by contacting us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+.

Last week we added another video guide to the SocialSafe YouTube Channel, this time giving you a tour of the Journal, showing you how to filter what is displayed, and over what time period:

As you’ll see, we’ve tried to make life easier for you by including some preset date ranges that will allow you to quickly isolate your activities within commonly used time periods. The calendar also gives you complete flexibility over the date, allowing you to select your own start and end points, and therefore customise your own date ranges. You can also jump straight to any single day by clicking on it.

If you want to filter out certain networks, or specific accounts, you can also do this via the top bar. For example you might have a Twitter account that automatically posts many times a day which might overfill the Journal, making it harder to see your Facebook updates. Within the Journal you can simply exclude that Twitter account from the current view. Likewise you can choose to view just one account in isolation when viewing content in the Journal.

You’ll also notice that you can perform a search within your selected date range by selecting ‘Search [keyword or phrase] on this page’. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, you can always click ‘Search [keyword or phrase] everywhere’, which will revert back to looking at the entire date range of your content. For more on searching social networks, click to see the specific video.

There are plenty of other ways to browse and view your content, but hopefully with the Journal we have created a view that everyone can customise to their own requirements, giving them greater control over how they use their content.